A Human Dimensions Inquiry in Watershed Analysis: Listening to Constituents’ Views of Contested Legitimacy on the National Forest

To understand the human dimension of a watershed from the points of view of its residents, qualitative data were collected using an approach that included both individual interviews and group discussions designed to include a full range of watershed stakeholders. A set of interrelated legitimacy patterns were apparent in the data, ranging from perceptions of exclusion and alienation to more extreme manifestations such as constitutionalist challenges to federal authority and conspiracy theories about an enormous, impending United Nations ‘‘Park’’ in the Cascades. Two related theoretical concepts, (1) a shift in social priorities for public lands, linked to certain economic transitions and (2) a legitimation problem, in which an excluded populace contests the legitimacy of federal management of public land, add credence to these patterns and the human dimension conditions that they suggest.